Dharma Initiative
The Dharma Initiative, also written DHARMA, is a fictional research project and organization featured in the television series Lost. It was introduced in the second season episode "Orientation". In 2008, the Dharma Initiative website was launched. Dharma's interests were directly connected with fringe science. Dharma is a Sanskrit term used in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. The logo is an octagon with the word "dharma" inside, all inscribed inside a bagua.
Background
The Dharma Initiative and its origins are first explored in the episode "Orientation" by an orientation film in the Swan Station. Dr. Pierre Chang, under the alias of Dr. Marvin Candle, explains that the project began in 1970, created by two doctoral candidates from the University of Michigan, Gerald and Karen DeGroot, and was funded by Alvar Hanso of the Hanso Foundation. They imagined a "large-scale communal research compound", where scientists and free thinkers from around the globe could research meteorology, psychology, parapsychology, zoology, electromagnetism, and a sixth discipline that the film begins to identify as "utopian social-" before being cut off.The episodes "LaFleur" and "He's Our You" indicate that mathematician Horace Goodspeed was in charge of Dharma Initiative operations on the Island, at least from the very early 1970s through the time of "the Incident". Key decisions that needed to be made on the Island were taken by a committee, which included all department heads, including Head of Research Stuart Radzinsky and security head LaFleur. They, in turn, answer to the Dharma Initiative HQ based at the University of Michigan, as evidenced when Radzinsky threatens to call the University to override a key decision by Goodspeed. In the episode "The Variable", Daniel Faraday confirmed that Dharma Initiative Headquarters, at least through 1977, was located at Ann Arbor, Michigan.
The "Lost Experience", an alternate reality game which took place in 2006, revealed that the objective of the Dharma Initiative was to alter any of the six factors of the Valenzetti Equation, an equation which "predicts the exact number of years and months until humanity extinguishes itself," to allow humans to exist for longer by changing their doomsday. These factors are represented as numbers in the Valenzetti Equation and are also the numbers frequently mentioned in the show: 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42.
In 1977, the Dharma workers based on the Island drilled into a huge electromagnetic pocket, releasing a catastrophically dangerous amount of electromagnetic energy. This is referred to as "the Incident" and is frequently alluded to in other Dharma Initiative sources. Radzinsky insisted on drilling despite warnings from Dr. Chang about the danger. In the Swan Station orientation film, recorded in 1980, Dr. Marvin Candle insists that the computer at the Swan Station not be used for any other purpose, specifically to communicate with other stations. When the Oceanic 815 survivors travel back in time to 1977, they attempt to negate the release of this energy by detonating the plutonium core of a hydrogen bomb, causing a massive explosion that returns all of the time travelers back to 2007.
After the Incident, according to notes on the blast door map painted by Stuart Radzinsky in the Swan Station, the Dharma Initiative's facilities on the Island seemed to fall into disrepair. The blast door map has been annotated about destroyed access tunnels, a breakdown in the Cerberus Security System and mentions facilities being abandoned or destroyed via other incidents or accidents, specifically one happening on October 28, 1984, another in 1985, and a final one on December 7, 1987. By the time Danielle Rousseau and her crew shipwrecked on the Island, in 1988, many of the facilities on the Island had been abandoned, including the radio tower. At no point between then and the eventual purge of its members did the Dharma Initiative attempt a search and rescue for Danielle or her crew, despite Danielle broadcasting her own distress signal on a continuous loop from the tower for sixteen years.
When the Dharma Initiative arrived on the Island, they fought with the Island's natives, known to them as the Hostiles and to the survivors of Flight 815 as the "Others". The "Hostiles" had been living on the Island long before the Initiative arrived. The Arrow Station was eventually given a mission to observe and formulate strategies to counter the Hostiles. When Ben Linus arrived on the Island in 1970, there was still an open conflict between the Hostiles and the Dharma Initiative. At some point prior to 1974, a truce of some kind was brokered with the Hostiles. A series of protocols were put into place between the Hostiles and the Initiative. Several episodes mention that there was a "line" and that certain parts of the Island were considered to be the "territory" of each group. This conflict ended in 1992, when Linus joined the Hostiles, who killed the Initiative, an event which became known as "The Purge". The bodies were buried in a mass grave.
In 2001, after Stuart Radzinsky's alleged suicide in The Swan, Kelvin Inman, a man who found Desmond adrift on the beach, was still working for the Dharma Initiative in the Swan station. Lost producer Carlton Cuse confirms in a podcast that Kelvin was indeed a member of the Dharma Initiative. In the "Lost Experience", an actor portraying fictional Hanso Foundation executive Hugh McIntyre appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, where he stated that the Foundation had stopped funding the Dharma Initiative in 1987. However, in season 2, an air drop of supplies arrived for the Swan station. This drop was made by a drone launched from the Dharma Logistics Warehouse located on the Orote Peninsula on the island of Guam. Two of the last known living members of the Dharma Initiative, known only as Hector and Glenn, had been sending regular supply drops to The Island for over twenty years. This indicates a financial structure had been left in place by the Hanso Foundation, hinted at in the Sri Lanka video, to pay the two workers and keep them supplied with packaged foodstuffs and equipment sufficient to continue sending pallets to The Island in perpetuity. They were regularly given the coordinates of The Island via a teletype link to the still-working Lamp Post station, allowing them to program the drones with the exact drop locations for their cargo. In the epilogue short video "The New Man in Charge", Ben Linus arrives at the warehouse and, after answering Hector and Glenn's questions, shuts it down, correctly telling the Dharma workers that there's a new man in charge and their work is no longer needed.
At the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con, a new ARG began with a booth recruiting new members to the Initiative. At the Lost panel, Hans van Eeghen, a Dharma executive, revealed that the results from the booth were "abysmal", and a few people had been selected to view a video that had been sent from thirty years in the past. In the video, Pierre Chang said that the work on the Island is valid, and it is essential that the Dharma Initiative is restarted. Following this a website was launched, which allowed users to join the Dharma Initiative.
Research stations
The Dharma Initiative built nine known research stations around the Island, most of which take the form of hidden underground facilities or bunkers. After Oceanic Flight 815 crashes on the Island in September 2004, the survivors encounter several of these stations. The first to be discovered is "The Swan" which they refer to informally as "the hatch". Nine additional stations have since been visited over the series, each with its own particular logo associated with it: an octagon, similar to the bagua design, with a differing symbol at the center.On the blast door map, there are 6 structures depicted, and at least 4 of them are labeled by name and icon: the Swan, the Flame, the Staff and the Arrow. The other structures are labeled by question marks or numbers. Two of the alleged stations are drawn with dotted lines. The six structures all surround a big circled question mark in the center of the map. At the top left, there is a seventh structure which is scribbled out. The Swan’s blast door map makes reference to a light manufacturing facility, a meteorological research station, station "CVII", and others that were never shown on the series.
Among the hatches on the southeast side of the map, there are 4 rectangular structures/labels that have "CVI","CVII","CVIII", and "CVIV" written on them. CV stands for Cerberus Vent, which was revealed in secret writing on the back of one of the Lost jigsaw puzzles. The Swan station's blast door map claims that there was, at one time, a tunnel network that connected many of the stations. Notations on the map suggest that the tunnels started falling into disrepair in the early 1980s, soon after the incident occurred.
Station 1: The Hydra
The Hydra is a zoological research station located on a small island roughly two miles off-shore from the main island. It is described as being about twice the size of Alcatraz Island. The Hydra facility has cages outside the station in the jungle where polar bears used to be kept. An underwater complex was once used as an aquarium, which housed sharks and dolphins. The facility also features living and research quarters. The symbol for this station is the usual Dharma Initiative logo with a hydra in the middle, which can be seen on a large canopy behind Kate and Sawyer’s cages in season 3.At the start of season 3, Jack, Kate, and Sawyer are held captive on the Hydra island by the Others. Kate and Sawyer are forced to build a runway, until they manage to escape. In season two, a shark has the Dharma symbol branded on its tail. Also in season three episode "A Tale of Two Cities", Tom comments that the polar bears that used to be housed in the cage Sawyer was being held in figured out the "food" puzzle in two hours. A leather collar bearing the Dharma Hydra symbol is found near a polar bear skeleton in the Tunisian desert. In the fifth season, Ajira Airways Flight 316 makes a forced but overall safe landing on the Hydra island, landing on the runway built by the Others. In the fifth-season episode "Some Like It Hoth", Dr. Chang threatens to send an over-inquisitive Hurley to the Hydra to participate in their "ridiculous experiments" if he mentions a body delivered to Dr. Chang by Miles Straume.